


The Air is Getting Slippery

by 221blackandwhitestripes



Series: Gotham Season 5 Fics [7]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Confusion, Day Four: Mutual Pining, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Nygmobblepot Week 2019, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Season/Series 05, Set during those nine months, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 13:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18261818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221blackandwhitestripes/pseuds/221blackandwhitestripes
Summary: Oswald isn't sure what he and Ed are anymore. And he's not sure how much longer he can wait to find out.(Set during the unexplained nine months of Season Five)





	The Air is Getting Slippery

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of [Since When Do You Believe in Fate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18238973), but I wrote this first and it can definitely stand alone. Inspired by speculation of what has been happening for the nine months (more or less) Ed and Oswald have been living together. Please enjoy!

Life is sometimes far more complicated than Oswald Cobblepot can take.

Sometimes, things escape him; falling into puddles and rivers that wash all the colours away. Memories bleed out around him, wasting away. It kills him a little. Some memories more than others.

Then there is Ed, the one he’d thought had left, then came back again. Left, then came back again. Left, then came back again. Dressed like a nickel lost down a well, but really a yo-yo Oswald just can’t seem to fully catch.

He looks at Ed and thinks; _He’s mine now, right?_

Ed smiles at him, oblivious, and Oswald’s still not sure.

It’s been a while since the bridges blew, and so much has happened since then. Out of all it, the most extraordinary is Ed, by his side once more.

 _Is this it?_ He’ll ask him in the morning, mouth sewn shut by the string attached. _Did I catch you? Are you mine? Am I yours?_

Ed will tilt his head at him, puzzled by the silence.

“Explain this to me,” Oswald will ask, point at the nearest thingamabob and watch Ed’s eyes as they carve out a smile.

“Well…” Ed has a habit of opening his mouth and speaking nothing. He doesn’t ever really answer the questions Oswald tries to ask.

“Thank you, friend.” And his voice will always waver over the word: _Friend_.

_Is that what we are? Is that all we’ll ever be?_

Ed laughs at something and Oswald feels his heart burst like a dam overflowing.

_Friends?_

Oswald will dance the wire if he can get away with it. He doesn’t think Ed wants him, has no reason to believe it, so he’ll take what he can. Excuses their candlelight dinners with the dark city windows. Touches Ed’s arm and calls it a friendly pat. Bumps into him during the night after Ed’s woken from a nightmare once more. Calls it a coincidence.

Gives him a hug, heartbeat racing, racing, racing, and says it’s fine.

It is fine.

They’re friends.

_Friends._

“How are we coming along, my friend?” Oswald asks.

_Friend._

Oswald tries to be the person Ed needs, not the one he is, shoves the dirty thoughts and searching fingers into a box in his chest. _Just for the moment,_ he promises himself. He’ll explore them at night, take them out and admire them like treasures, two fingers in deep, a hand wrapped around his mouth to keep the silence.

Not yet, though. Patience is...

Patience is survival.

Oswald sews up his mouth, makes it constantly spout Ed’s favourite words: “That’s amazing, Ed!” Amazing, spectacular, extraordinary, ingenious, superb, fantastic, admirable, gorgeous.

_Are you mine yet?_

Oswald needs to tell himself to shut up. “Do you need help?” He asks instead, strangles his vocal cords to make sure they say the right thing.

“Some company would be nice,” Ed tells him with a smile, pats the chair beside his bench.

Oswald sits down, and this is easy enough. Sometimes, all Ed needs him to do is be there. A silent presence, keeping his eyes on the door to make sure no one’s coming to bash their skulls against the wall. Other times, they’ll talk, and Oswald might grow reminiscent, bleeding memories pouring out, and be forced to cut himself off - but sometimes he doesn’t have the self-control and Ed will give him this _look_.

“I remember,” he’ll say, so overwhelmingly _warm_. “Things were simpler back then.”

Yes, they were.

_You’re still not mine, are you?_

Oswald clasps his hands around the box in his chest and waits for night’s curtain to fall.

Ed sighs, stretches his back until it pops. “Dinner?” he asks, a coy smile thrown over his shoulder.

“Dinner,” Oswald nods, getting up to make it ready. Three candles in the centre. The best silverware he can find. The sense of balancing on the tip of a knife.

“Thank you, Oswald,” Ed says. The candlelight always captures his eyes. “I do so appreciate this.”

“No, thank you, Ed,” Oswald reaches, places his hand over Ed’s. It burns. “All the work you’ve done to get this submarine finished? You’re irreplaceable.” He pulls his hand back before the box inside his chest can burst open and stain their table with things best left unsaid.

“That means a lot, Oswald.” Ed smiles and Oswald is forced to close his eyes, hands curling into fists. “Your friendships skills show signs of improving.”

Oswald smiles bitterly in the darkness of his mind, hoping Ed doesn’t see it and question him. “Thank you, that’s what I’ve been aiming for.” 

Ed laughs and Oswald’s box shudders in his hands.

It’s okay, he can maintain this, he’s sure of it. He’s held up under worse.

The world is turning, turning, and he won’t fall off.

“Awake again, Oswald?” 

Oswald looks up to see Ed’s brown eyes peering down at him, luminous like a cat’s in the relative light.

“It’s those damn gangs, keeping me up at all hours,” Oswald jokes _(lies)_ through his teeth, feels his spine wrinkle uncomfortably. “I remember when that was us.”

“Hmm?”

Oswald’s eyes widen as he notices the lid of his box is still open, and he rushes to jam it over everything that threatens to bubble to the surface. “Sorry, it’s nothing.” He laughs, harsher this time. “Just a dream I was having.”

“Oh.” Ed blinks that bleary little blink and Oswald quakes. This is getting a bit too much for him. “I admit, my dreams haven’t been all too pleasant as of late.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Oswald says, struggles to hold on. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“I don’t know.” Ed shrugs uncomfortably and Oswald has to snatch his hand away before it reaches out to touch. “Ever since the chip, I’ve been feeling… compromised.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Oswald assures him gently, voice dipping into danger - a toe in the lake of sincerity. “I’d tell you if you’d been acting strangely. I promise.”

“You do know me better than anyone else in this city.”

Oswald’s tongue swipes across his bottom lip. “Really?”

“Of course, Oswald.” Ed smiles and takes a step forward - like this is _fine_ , while Oswald is being pushed back into a river of black water, swallowed by the current, a bullet under his ribs as he watches the yo-yo string fly away from him. “I feel like I can really trust you.”

Ed pulls him into a hug and Oswald's chest constricts from the water pressure as he sinks down, down, down.

_This is all it’s ever going to be like, isn’t it? Keeping each other close but never close enough?_

The air is getting slippery.

The box falls from Oswald’s hands.

“Ed, I think-” Oswald takes the lid off the box with a sigh, tips out the contents so they are plain to see. “I think that I cannot maintain this.”

“This?” Ed's eyes are wide and frightened, a deer in the wood spotted down the line of Oswald’s scope. “What do you mean?”

“I want to be okay with us,” Oswald tells him. “But every day, I’m just so confused.”

“Confused?” Ed is an echo now, whispering down a dark tunnel that Oswald can’t see the end of.

“Ed, we are friends, yes?” Oswald asked him, snatching a hand in his desperation.

“Of course,” Ed breathes, eyes filling like a river channel. “Of course, we are friends!”

_But you keep me closer._

“And that’s all we are?” Oswald clarifies, blinks away the madness and sin. “ _Just_ friends?”

“W-well, I-I - I’m not entirely… But-”

Oswald shakes his head. “We shouldn’t be confused about it, Ed. Either we are friends, or we aren’t.”

He breathes deep, closes his eyes. He places the box in front of him, a wall in between them. “Either you’re mine or you’re not. Either you want me or you don’t. But I cannot live with the confusion as I try to figure it out for you. So just _tell_ me.” Oswald swallows his pride, coughs up a bullet. “ _Please_.”

“I-I-” Ed’s eyes are lost, and Oswald has lost him as well.

 _He’s not mine._ Oswald smiles bitterly. _He never was._

_We’re not like that._

“I don’t know, Oswald,” Ed gasps out, breath shuddering like an old staircase during an earthquake. “But if you could give me some time, I could try-”

“No, Ed,” Oswald sniffs, looks at the box at his feet. “I’m afraid I’ve been holding onto this for far too long. It’s for the best I just let it go.”

“But-but, _Oswald_.” It’s Ed who’s desperate now. It seems strange on him.

_Please, just let me let you go._

“I think I’ll just be staying with Barbara for a bit,” Oswald goes on. “She won’t mind, I’m sure.”

Ed shakes his head. A tear slips down, glistening in the moonlight. “ _Oswald._ ” What a wretched twist to those syllables.

“Don’t you worry, Ed,” Oswald forces a smile, “We’ll still be friends. You aren’t losing me.”

Ed sniffs, nods, wipes his eyes. Oswald lays a hand on his shoulder.

“But, _just_ friends. Nothing more,” Oswald tells him. It hurts something awful.

“C-can I still ask for a hug?” Ed blubbers. “Just this once.”

Oswald smiles, his heart pounding. “Just this once.”

Ed sobs in his arms, minutes ticking by. Slowly, the tears stop. Eventually, Ed steps back.

Oswald leaves the next morning, his box still set in the hallway outside Ed’s room, items still waiting to be admired.

Oswald decides he doesn’t want them anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> ...Sorry? I have the next chapter planned out, don't worry. For now, any and all kudos/comments are greatly appreciated as always! (I promise tomorrow's fic is happier)


End file.
